On Mental Magic

Over the years I have come to believe that mentalism is the strongest kind of magic that there is. But it has to be presented in the right venue and with the right kind of people.

I did a show a couple of weeks ago where it consisted of an all adult birthday party for a very wealthy man. The show was held in his home theater, complete with a stage up front. I am a firm believer that if you do mentalism you have to teach the audience as you go in the sense that what they are about to see is very much a different brand of magic. This is not to say that it cannot be funny. But because of slower attention spans there cannot be a long drawn out series of steps that you go through in order to get to the effect. The effect has to hit them hard, has to be very easily apprehended and if possible, as visual as you can make it.

For example, Larry Becker in his follow up to the World of Mentalism book has a nice casino gambling book test. A book on gambling is shown and the spectator inserts a card to a freely selected page. This page is noted and then the spectator opens the book to another page where there is a figure of a roulette table. Any three numbers across are added together to get a lucky number. The page and the number are now divined by the mentalist. It is a great effect.

But it is too unwieldy to perform for short attention spans. Most of the venues I perform at are where people have had at least one drink. They don't want to add numbers. And the process becomes the death-knell because it soaks up the plot. Unfortunately, I think the method is what became the attractant for Becker, rather than the plot itself. You should be able to have the spectator open the book to the roulette page, look at a number and then you tell them what number they picked.

I did my stulless watch routine based on Danny Korem's routine in Kaballa. Then I did my Voodoodle routine that was published in the Linking Ring. This effect is where you have a pair of Magna-doodle children's toys (kind of like an etch a sketch). The spectator joins you on the stage and you ask them to draw a stick figure of a boss they did not particularly like. Then you ask them to stick an imaginary voodoo needle into the picture by marking a big "X" anywhere on the figure. They turn it around to show, and your stick figure has an X in the same place. I'll leave it to you to look up the routine. It appeared in the 2002 or 2003 Linking Ring.

After the show the ladies that helped me told me they loved the mentalism tricks and had no idea how I did it. That is what you're hoping for